


distorted acquaintance

by penguistifical



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Helen and Melanie hanging out, happy relationships are to peter lukas as garlic is to vampires, this one's pretty bittersweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:15:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24654454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguistifical/pseuds/penguistifical
Summary: It’s around the third murder attempt that Melanie hears the unexpected sound of a door opening behind her. She knows there's definitely not a door in that part of the office, because she's been over the place twice looking for good hiding spots for a few select items. She's currently keeping a bottle of scotch in her desk, because you never know. She's also keeping her knives behind the bookshelf because it's the Institute, and sometimes you do know.some somewhat connected snippets of several times Helen visited Melanie
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	distorted acquaintance

**Author's Note:**

> I really like how helen and melanie are chilling in 131, and then a fic happened, as they do  
> I think I may have botched the timeline slightly...close enough.
> 
> cw: Self harm. Not graphic, but very present. (It’s after Melanie takes action to leave the Institute.) Also, discussion of poisoning somebody.

It’s around the third murder attempt that Melanie hears the unexpected sound of a door opening behind her. There’s a definitive soft click of a latch sliding from the side of the office that previously had just been a wall and a bookcase. She’s sure that there hadn’t been a door there before, not just from having been in the office for a week, but also because she’d been over the room several times locating the best hiding places for her caches. Some of her treasured personal recording equipment is in a cabinet behind a set of dull files. In her lowest drawer, under a sweater, is a bottle of scotch, because you never know. Behind the bookshelf are her two knives, because it’s the Institute, and sometimes you do know.

Melanie gives the tea on her desk an experimental stir to see if it stays appropriately tea-colored, that it doesn’t show any sign of the decidedly un-tea ingredients she'd added. “What terrible new thing in this place are you, then?” she calls to whatever’s behind her, preparing to throw the toxic contents of the mug over her shoulder where she hopes its face is.

“That’s rather rude,” it says, quite pleasantly, stepping around to the front of the desk. “I thought it might be nice to say hello, and, well, see if the Piper’s pet has any objections to my traveling around. Your lot tends to be territorial.”  
  
“You’re Helen,” Melanie says slowly, setting the tea back down on the desk. “I’ve heard about you.”

“Good things, I hope?”

“No. You think I might, what, nail your doors shut?”  
  
“Oh, goodness, no. Just that you might be growling on the other side. Not that it’d stop my coming and going, you understand.” Helen slowly extends her fingers as a knife salesman might unfurl a set of their wares. “Just want to see what sort of fun is in store.”

The idea of pitting herself against the avatar of the Spiral is undeniably attractive. Melanie can feel a berserker's grin start to grow on her face, but firmly shakes her head.  
  
“I’ve got an appointment to keep with the boss. Nice to meet you, forgive me for not shaking hands.”

Helen laughs, and the sound is unhinged in every meaning of the word. Creaking echoes of doors fill the spaces in between her giggles. She reaches out with a talonish finger and, to Melanie’s surprise, puts it in the mug of tea. Helen gives the drink two counterclockwise stirs, lets the liquid swirl around her finger for a moment, and then raises the mug to her mouth for a taste.

“No!” Melanie cries out, lunging forward and trying to grab the mug back.

“Whyever not?”

“I don’t want to hurt _you._ ” Melanie explains, trying to figure out how to get back the tea from Helen’s impossible grasp. “I’m trying to kill somebody, to be honest. That’s poisoned as hell - which, if all goes as planned, is where I’ll be sending Elias.”

Helen smiles, and relinquishes the cup. “How like you.” 

“You don’t even know me.” Melanie tells her, but Helen just clucks and smiles.

“Well, I’d wish you good luck, but I think Elias might realize that his tea isn’t the way he prefers.” Helen taps a daggered nail on the rim of the cup. “I don’t imagine he generally goes for two sugars, cream, and poison, dear.”

“I’m not ‘dear’ to you." Melanie rolls her eyes and stands up from the desk, toxic delivery in hand.

“My apologies, it really is just the opposite, isn’t it? Then, good luck with your caffeinated murder, vicious.”

As Melanie leaves, through the regular door, she hears a second door click closed in the back of the office.

Helen reappears several days later, this time emerging from a door appearing right next to the one that’s normally there. Melanie acknowledges her with a wave, busily outlining notes behind a fortress of tapes piled high around her.

“Do you know,” Melanie says, “I’m not sure anybody in this place has any actual audial experience? Stuff down here is a right mess.”

“It’s always going to be lacking.” Helen says, pushing the tape recorder away so that she can perch on the edge of the desk. “No offense to your skills, of course.”

“Because some of the stuff just won’t record properly? I worked with ghosts for years, I know editing tricks to get around that sort of thing.”

“No, it’s more the...essence of it all.” Helen purses her lips thoughtfully. “I remember giving my statement, more or less, when I used to be somebody named Helen outside of my hallways. It’s a true story on paper and on tape, but it’s just one single story. I’m a glorious labyrinth set in a diamond with a million million facets. How could I be put on a piece of paper?” Helen nods to Melanie. “How could you be captured on a tape?”

Melanie frowns, doodling a spiral on her notes before realizing what she’s doing and crumpling the paper. “It’s not the same. _We’re_ not the same.” 

“No, not at all, vicious. We’ve little enough in common, really. Your set sees through to the heart of things. With one swift cut, usually.”

“Again,” says Melanie, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“And I haven’t brought you into my hallways.”

“I wouldn’t visit if you asked me.” Melanie retorts, to Helen’s chuckle of genuine amusement. “Well, I maybe can’t capture monsters perfectly, but I’ll at least clean up these logs a bit.”

Melanie nudges over a mug. “I’m not sure how you take it? But this isn’t poisoned.” 

“Why, vicious, a second cup of tea on your desk, and for me?" Helen says. "It’s almost as if you were hoping I’d visit.”

"This is probably awful, and, no offense, but, talking with you is some of the sanest conversation I get in this place.”

Helen gives her a grin and hooks the tea over to herself. She swivels the mug in quick circles and the tea within swirls and swirls, a miniature maelstrom.

“So, speaking of audio expertise,” Melanie says, uncrumpling the paper, “I met somebody who does a podcast. Well, not 'met,' we've talked before, professionally. But we started hanging out more.”

“Do tell.”

Neither door in the office is used for some time.

Melanie barely hears a door opening quietly over her tearless sobs of fury.

It’d be the seventh? eighth? Another failed attempt of trying to save everybody. There’s an image burned into her brain, knowledge she never ever wanted to know. It’s a truth that’s slowly corrupting the happy memories she takes out and examines when she needs to drive back an all-consuming rage that rises up far too easily these days.

“Can’t you help me kill him?” she begs Helen.

“I will not.”

It maybe should feel like betrayal, but it doesn’t. Helen’s complicated, to put it far too simply. 

“I hate him,” Melanie says quietly, and feels the statement echo in her mind, _I hate him I hate him I hate him_ repeating it to herself as the Slaughter’s power surges within her.

Helen’s hand settles on her back, feeling like a pile of coiled up wires, and Melanie sighs.

Melanie jumps slightly when a door opens downwards out of the ceiling. Helen drops out with a graceful spin.

“How are you going to get back up there?” Melanie asks curiously.

“I’ve never worried about it. Somebody sent you flowers?”

“Ha, yeah.” Melanie grins at the bouquet on her desk. “My girlfriend thought I’d like them.”  
  
Helen gently brushes a bloom with a fingertip, being very careful not to rip any petals. “Looks like she was right.”

“She was. Nobody’s brought me flowers before. She’s too good for me, Helen.” Melanie points a teasing finger at the Distortion, and adds, “Don’t take that as an invite to go mess her up.”

Helen points back with a much more impressive claw.

“That one’s in a clear glass case that can’t be chiseled. Her path’s mapped. In short, there’s nothing I can do to her.”

Melanie sort of wants to follow up on what that means, but there’s really enough going on right now. It’s enough that Georgie’s safe.

“Anyway, none of that ‘too good for me’ drivel.” Helen remonstrates. “You’re a beloved sword-bearer of the Slaughter. You’re the one that’s too good for her, if you look at it that way. It’s all a matter of perspective, really.”  
  
Melanie looks at the door swinging slightly above them. “I don’t want to hear about matters of perspective from somebody who just popped out of the ceiling.”

“Well, how else should I visit you? This isn’t the same place it was the first time I came by, and so it’s not going to be the same door.”

“It’s the same old office, isn’t it?” Melanie asks.

“Yes, of course. But things between _us_ have changed.”

Melanie considers. “I suppose they have.”

Melanie can’t stand to look at the new door for more than a second, an angular impossibility that’s somehow appeared in the corner of the room where the walls meet and where there definitely isn’t space for a door.

She’d gone back to her office after the Flesh attacked, and she feels like a dog that’s been returned to its kennel after winning the fight. She paces back and forth, hissing between her teeth.

Oh, the others had been so grateful that she was there to save them, but the moment the last meaty abomination was just a stain, she’d seen their fear refocus on _her_.

“Some thanks we got,” she growls to Helen. The problem is, her coworkers might be right to fear her. It’d felt so good to brutally unleash her anger on the visceral army.  
  
She’d been told, when starting out on her ghosthunting channel, that people wouldn’t find her strong emotions an “attractive” personality trait. She’d cheerfully told them to go fuck themselves. Melanie’s anger made her brave, made her daring, made her stand up for herself and her production team. Now she’s all rage and she’s not sure that if she were to peel off the anger in a week that there’d still be a ‘Melanie’ within her.

“That meaty lump is wandering my hallways now,” Helen complains.

“Good, I hope Jared hates it in there.” Melanie snaps back. 

“Oh, he does, I assure you.” Helen’s tone is careless, somewhat entertained, even.

“Did you like that,” Melanie asks her, trying not to lunge forward. “Helping us fight?”

“Oh, I don’t mind assisting for a good cause, vicious. I think the question rather is, did _you_ like that?”

Melanie purses her lips and whistles. It’s a high eerie pitch, and she feels like her whole body is the instrument channeling the sound, the wind over a battlefield.

Helen listens impassively. “We can fight, if you’d like. I’ll probably just leave, though.”

The lack of reaction offers no challenge. “No, I really don’t want to fight you. It’s not me.” She turns to the Spiral, anguished. “Helen, I feel like I’m being torn in half.”

Helen gives her a slow smile. “I imagine the piece of Flesh downstairs that you dealt with knows just what that feels like.”

Melanie laughs, and it helps. The rage bleeds out of her, and she finally relaxes. “That’s awful.”

She stores one of her knives back behind the bookshelf, not minding that Helen sees where they’re kept, but keeps a close hold on her other blade. “I did. Like it, that is. Oh, Helen, what if I hurt Georgie?” Helen swivels her fingers in a ‘go-on’ motion, something that looks horrific with her long hands. “What if my blood gets up, and, I don’t know.”

“I might suggest talking to her,” Helen offers. “That one fears nothing. At the very least, she won’t be afraid of you after you confide in her.”

“True…” Melanie considers. “I’m the only one that still leaves now and then. Everybody else is staying in here where it’s safe. Safe-ish. Well, you stay because it’s fun. But the point is, maybe I’ll go see her tonight, if she’s not busy.”

“Let me know how it goes, vicious.” Helen says, and departs. Melanie watches for as long as she can as Helen fades like a fractal through her paradoxical door.  
  
  


Helen pops into the office to see her the next week, and, despite everything, Melanie gives her a positively dopey grin. She’s wearing a ‘What the Ghost?’ t-shirt that does nothing to hide the lovebites around her neck.

“Well, now, I don’t know if that’s workplace appropriate,” Helen singsongs, and grins back. “So, your talk went well?”

“Yes, and if Peter doesn’t like the shirt, he can drop dead.” retorts Melanie, and laughs. “Actually, I’ve heard he just _hates_ people talking about their significant others, so he’s probably more likely to stay away. If he shows up, I’ll just start talking about the baby voice Georgie does for the Admiral, or how she remembered that I don’t like cilantro, or how one time I fed her popcorn and she kissed my fingertips and we had to restart the movie because we weren’t watching it and missed all of the beginning.” Helen’s smile is soft as Melanie continues to ramble fondly. “She kissed me goodbye this morning and I’m thinking about that now and I’ll think about it all day until I see her again and she kisses me hello.”

“You two are _so_ cute,” Helen says, and Melanie throws a pen at her.

Melanie hears a door opening behind her and turns her head automatically towards the sound. She sees nothing, obviously. She recognizes the distinctive click of Helen’s footsteps as the avatar of the Distortion approaches and picks up the awl that’s still on the desk.

“A tool for repairing books, used for destruction...feels somehow appropriate for this, don't you think?” Helen asks. 

Melanie nods, clenching the edges of the desk as hard as she can. “It was the sharpest tool I could think of, in this place.”

She hears the sound of a dozen swords leaving their scabbards. Helen is unfurling her nails. “The sharpest tool in this place? Not quite. Why didn’t you ask _me_ to do it?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.” Melanie rests her head in her hands and wonders how she’s going to muster the strength to get up. A warm palm comes to rest carefully, so carefully, on her shoulder.

“The wounds on your face, they aren’t painful at all.” Helen tells her.

Melanie barks out a harsh laugh. “I know that they are.”

“Maybe they’re not,” suggests Helen. Melanie feels a nudging at her mind, and reality buckles for just a moment in a way that makes her head spin.

“That’s the way,” Helen coaxes, as the pain fades to nothing. “There you are.”

A hand that feels like umbrella spokes helps Melanie rise, and supports her under her arm. 

“This way, vicious.” Helen croons, and leads her into the domain of the Spiral.

Melanie walks at her side through gentle twists and turns, treading circles that feel like they’re getting smaller and smaller, like traveling to the bottom of a cyclone. Helen’s palm stays splayed on her back like a protective set of wings.

“Where are we going?” Melanie whispers, feeling somehow that she should be quiet in this place. 

Helen chuckles as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. “Melanie, I’m following _you_.” she answers.

A door opens, and Melanie hears Georgie cry out in shock. She tumbles forwards into her lover’s arms.

“Oh, god.” Georgie gasps, wrapping her arms around her. “It’s going to be okay, Mel'. It’s going to be okay.”

Melanie thinks, for the first time in months, that it actually might be. She’s not afraid anymore.

She hears, distantly, the soft click of a door closing behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> me: don’t name it a door pun, don’t name it a door pun,  
> great success!
> 
> thank you very much to everybody who leaves kudos and comments, you are all really great and I appreciate it a lot


End file.
